The opportunity to personalize features in a mobile vehicle is ever increasing as the automobile is being transformed into a communications and entertainment platform as well as a transportation platform. Many new cars will be installed with some type of telematics unit to provide wireless communication and location-based services. These services may be accessed through interfaces such as voice-recognition computer applications, touch-screen computer displays, computer keyboards, or a series of buttons on the dashboard or console of a vehicle.
Currently, telematics service call centers establish a voice or data communication channel between a telematics unit and the call center to provide various types of location services, including sending emergency help to a vehicle when air bags deploy, stolen vehicle tracking, traffic information, weather reports, road condition information, accident updates, street routing, and business finders.
When a user attempts to establish a non-emergency communication channel between the telematics unit and the call center, the service provider opens the communication channel after the transmitted mobile identification number (MIN) and electronic serial number (ESN) are recognized as an authorized MIN/ESN pair. The initial call attempts to establish a data connection from the telematics unit to the call center, sending information such as the location of the vehicle and vehicle identification. If the attempt to open the communication channel fails the telematics unit automatically makes one or more attempts to open the non-emergency communication channel over normal cellular communication channels using the same MIN/ESN pair. If one or more additional attempts fail, the telematics unit informs the user that the call attempt has failed. An additional attempt is made using a voice only connection rather than a data connection. However, even the voice connection is subject to some failures.
The telematics unit continues indefinitely to establish an emergency communication channel between the telematics unit and the call center. In this case, additional call attempts are made followed by a non-authenticated voice call attempt. Non-authenticated voice calls, also known in the art as cleared calls, are comprised of predetermined phone numbers that are not checked by the carrier or network for validity. All the attempts to place the call are made over normal cellular communication channels using the same MIN/ESN pair.
It is desirable to reprogram the network access device to use additional technologies and previously assigned and/or alternative cellular parameters to establish the communication channel between the telematics unit and the call center in the event that an attempt to establish a communication channel between the telematics unit and the call center fails.